Reporters for The Economist write about banks all the time – but usually focus on the ones that are stuffed with money. This week, however, in an article titled Banks for bean counters, the heavyweight news magazine puts the spotlight on seed banks and their vital role in combating global hunger. The plant genetic resources stored in seed banksRead More …

In agricultural research, time-frames are long and funding often short, so getting the priorities right is crucial. Scientific organizations must be doubly sure they’re focused on tomorrow’s challenges and not yesterday’s, if they expect to remain relevant and effective. This is the spirit in which CIAT’s Decision and Policy Analysis (DAPA) Research Area has prepared a new policy brief examiningRead More …

Earlier this year, CIAT published a study in PNAS, which addresses the increasing homogeneity of global food supplies and the implications for food security. It revealed that diets worldwide have become more similar by an average of 36% in the last 50 years. According to the study, global food systems rely increasingly on just a few crops – inRead More …

Fifty years ago palm oil was virtually non-existent in the Colombian diet. Now over 25% of the fat in national food supplies comes from the crop, making it the single most important plant for the provision of this macronutrient in the diet. Intercropped maize and oil palm in Colombia. Photo: CIMMYT Along with Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Nigeria, ColombiaRead More …

As experts have been suspecting for a while, and as many of us have certainly noticed, people’s diets around the world have become very similar. So much so that in the past 50 years the whole world has come to rely increasingly on just a few crops for most of its food supplies – including old favorites such asRead More …